What Are the Best Comedies of the 21st Century? An In-Depth Look Into Critical and Audience Ratings

The comedic films of the 21st century have been an eclectic mix that feature 40-year-old virgins, bridesmaids and Merlot hate. We’ve been blessed with horror comedies (What We Do in the Shadows), comedy dramas (The Royal Tenenbaums) and just straight up comedy (The Other Guys) Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne, Judd Apatow and Edgar Wright directed solid gold movies that have made defining the word “comedy” impossible. So many of the 21st century comedies fall into several categories at once. For example, movies like Juno, Shaun of the Dead, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, The Station Agent, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, American Hustle and The Kid’s Are All Right cover every genre while still being recognized as comedy. Movies don’t have to be “Ow, My Balls” to be considered funny and that is why I collected so many films for the data set.

The 370 comedies I collected critic/audience data for are incredibly different but utilized laughs in brilliant ways. My favorite comedic moment of the 21st century revolves around a guy playing terrible tennis because his sister married Bill Murray.

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Here are my 10 favorite 21st century comedies to give you an example of the varying hilarity we’ve been given.

The Royal Tenenbaums

Hot Fuzz

Goon

The Trip

The Guard

In Bruges

What We Do in the Shadows

Sideways

The Other Guys

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

The following lists are pure data. I’ve haven’t tinkered with the averages or weighted anything. I simply wanted the facts and I found out some interesting things in the process. For instance, here are the films that audiences loved much more than critics. The numbers next to the movie represent the difference between the critic/audience averages.

5. Van Wilder – 48.1

4. Joe Dirt – 49.5

3. Grandma’s Boy – 51.5

2. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist – 60.1

1. Out Cold – 62.6

Zach looks shocked.

When I unleashed my 21st century horror post it sparked a lot of conversations about the definition of horror and what should be included. I loved those conversations and I understood the points made. So, in order to prevent mass annoyance I included a fourth category to appease the masses.

Top 25 critically rated comedies according to Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic critics

I guess a few of the more recent ones wouldn’t make the cut, like The Overnight or People, Places, Things. Comedies like The Mule, Hot Rod and Nightbus need more recognition. But if I was to pick 3 out of the ones listed, here we go…